Today, there are several methods for customers to obtain specific videos and movies for viewing at consumers' homes. Video rental and retail stores such as Blockbuster warehouse movies and video files pre-stored on digital storage media such as DVDs. Alternatively, a consumer may pay for cable or satellite subscription services where “videos on demand” (VOD) are available. For satellite customers, true VOD is difficult an uneconomical to support, and has resulted in growing deployment of digital video recorders (DVRs). Consumers subscribing to satellite video delivery services can only obtain the video content which the satellite company selects to make available in their satellite network, severely limiting consumer options. Typically, those options are limited to “first run” movies or current releases. Video games can also be purchased at stores for performance on personal computers, or specialized “game boxes.”
Consumer options can be enhanced in cable distribution since old-run movies may be archived at the cable-head end. Unfortunately, building VOD delivery infrastructures is expensive due to the upgrades required in both the cable-head end and the user-end decoder boxes. Moreover, this form of distribution typically limits the multimedia files available to consumers to a hand full of digitized feature length films. The availability of archived news clips is limited to links appearing on the web, and is usually in a low definition “PIP” (picture inside a picture) format. Typically, video games and other multimedia files are even less available on demand.
Because the digital distribution of cinematic films is a major consumer market readily appreciated by the average consumer, many specific examples herein are described in terms of cinematic feature length films (also known as movies). However, the embodiments described herein are fully envisioned to include the widest range of multimedia files, including, but not limited to cinematic feature length films, movie trailers and previews, news broadcasts, sports events, political speeches, and games, and further including, but not limited to distinct digital files systems within a multimedia file, such as audio files, video files, effect files (such as vibrating, tilting or rotating a platform or object), and ancillary files (such as time stamps, sub-titles, “director's cut” version of a movie, such as scenes that were removed prior to theater distribution, configurable files for editing nudity or profanity from a feature length film, advanced “levels” of a game, or other game options which may be available, including more expensive versions of a game) etc. Accordingly, specific examples that are directed to a digital file easily appreciated by a consumer, such as the video file of a feature length film, are offered for purposes of brevity, and to enhance reader comprehension by referring to consumer products most widely recognized by the greatest segment of the public. These specific are not intended to limit the scope of the appended claims, and should not be construed to limit the scope of the appended claims.
The distribution of multimedia files incorporates a wide variety of objectives, some of which are often in conflict according to models used today. For thousands of years, it has been recognized that speed and accuracy are often in conflict in the transmission of information. Any consumer who has had to “uninstall” a software application and confirm the uninstallation to the software producer through the internet can appreciate that consumer flexibility is often in conflict with protecting the interests of copyright holders and even patent holders for some digital applications. The digitizing of audio and video files for storage on digital media have enabled audio and video reproduction that is essentially impervious to corruption, and substantially error free, thereby allowing duplication with no loss of content quality. However, this as enabled, and frequently results in, large scale copyright violations of digitally copied material, from software to feature length films. With satellite and cable systems, a certain level of protection is built-in, as the video content is not provided in a form that hackers can easily copy and pirate for unlawful distribution or personal use. On the other hand, video rental chains, such as Blockbuster, Netflix, etc., are typically unconcerned about content security. Rather, it is the producers of feature length film that are typically faced with the enormous problems of copy protection. To ameliorate these copyright violations, a set of encoding schemes have been adopted within feature length DVD films. An additional level of DVD protection is produced by segmenting DVD players into “zones.” DVDs mastered for a particular zone cannot be played on a player set for different zones. Despite these protections, hackers have typically circumvented these protections and have continued the unlawful pirating, sale and distribution of copyrighted videos.